Twenty years ago, I wrote a letter to the Bloomington City Council opposing giving a grant to Planned Parenthood through city government's social services fund. I did not think I would still be fighting the same battle 20 years later, or that the corporate welfare would also be disbursed by the Monroe County Council. Yet that is where I was last week, imploring the county council not to give scarce resources to two organizations that very clearly do not need the money.

After the first several people who spoke in public comment opposed the handouts, representatives from Planned Parenthood, the National Organization for Women and "All Options" spoke in favor of the grants for PP and AO. None of them bothered to address a $500,000 budget surplus by All Options, or the $1.4 billion of total annual revenue of Planned Parenthood. None of the county councilors bothered to explain why these wealthy organizations deserve tax money over organizations with lesser financial resources.

The pink shirts complained that this debate should not be about abortion, because the grants to not pay for "abortion services" and because abortion is legal. Well, the answer to that dilemma is very simple: Stop giving taxpayer money to people who kill babies or pay for babies to be killed, and people who are morally opposed to killing babies will not need to show up at the meeting. I did not go to the city council meeting the previous month, because neither organization got any money from the city.

So why not instead invest in the futures Family Planning Clinic? The answer from Cheryl Munson was telling: The Futures Clinic is allegedly prohibited from referring for abortions. But if these grants are not about supporting abortion, then why does it matter that the Futures Family Planning Clinic is restrained in what they can do? So yes, this absolutely is a pro-abortion political statement. This is not about helping those in need. and it never was. This is an abuse of the public's trust and a waste of taxpayer dollars. It is shameful.